Corporate Daddy by Arlene James

good in bed.
    He knew it with that sense that men of experience have about such things. He knew something else, too. It would be different with Emily. She would not be one of those women whose faces all seemed to blur together in his memory. She would always stand out. The idea made him uncomfortable somehow, but he was no less determined to have Emily Applegate. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever being so determined to win a woman. He wondered how long it would be before Amanda Sue was ready for bed.
    “That was delicious,” he said, watching Emily carefully guiding the spoon gripped in Amanda Sue’s fist toward her open mouth. The child yanked away, turning her face at the last moment, and smacked herself in the ear with the spoonful of food.
    “Oh, no,” Emily said, “poor baby.” She took the spoon and picked up her napkin to wipe away the food. Amanda Sue let her do so long enough to grab a fistful of tortellini and cram it into her mouth, then tried to wipe off theevidence on the back of her head. Logan couldn’t help laughing.
    “Don’t encourage her,” Emily scolded, but her own mouth was wiggling. “She has to learn to eat like a lady.” She filled the spoon again and put it in Amanda Sue’s hand. She instantly tossed the contents over her shoulder, threw the spoon down and started trying to get out of her chair.
    “Down!” she demanded.
    Emily sighed and went after the floor with a napkin. “Let me get this, then you can have your bath,” she said.
    “I’ll take care of the bath,” Logan said, getting up.
    She left what she was doing and popped up onto her feet, gaping at him. “Really?”
    “Yep. Like you said, it’s time I started taking over, so I’ll bathe Miss Amanda Sue, dress her for bed, and then I’ll come back down here and clean up the dishes. How’s that?”
    “First you’d better catch me while I faint,” Emily drawled, parking her hands at her hips.
    “Anytime,” he said, holding out his arms. “Swoon away.”
    “On second thought, save your strength. Bath time may be more of a challenge than you realize.”
    “Coward.”
    “I prefer the term prudent .”
    “You prefer to have the last word.”
    “True,” she said, adding smugly, “and now I have it.” With that she walked out of the room.
    Laughing, Logan concentrated on stripping Amanda Sue of her shirt and getting her out of the chair. When they reached the bathroom, Emily had run the water and fixed the seat in place.
    “Downstairs with you,” Logan ordered. “We can handle it from here. Can’t we, ’Manda mine?” The baby was already trying to climb into the tub.
    Almost forty minutes later, he carried his happy daughter back downstairs. The bathroom looked like a flash flood area, and he was bare-chested, his soaked T-shirt drapedover the towel bar to dry. Amanda Sue, however, was clean and ready for bed in a long, cotton-knit nightgown, despite the fight she’d put up to stay in the tub. Emily was sitting with her feet up on the couch when he came down, the cat in her lap, her feet flexing back and forth. He put Amanda Sue down next to her.
    “You watch her,” he said, turning toward the kitchen. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
    “Don’t bother,” she said, pushing the cat off her lap and pulling Amanda Sue onto it. “I took care of it.”
    “Thank God,” he said fervently, and turned back to drop down on the couch at her feet. She laughed and started to pull them up, but he stopped her, his hands fastened firmly around her ankles. “You deserve a good foot rub for that,” he said, remembering the feel of her scalp beneath his fingertips and the way she’d moaned as he’d massaged her headache away. He wanted to hear those moans again—and more.
    “My feet are fine,” she insisted, but he pulled them down into his lap, anyway.
    “They aren’t tired? Don’t hurt at all?” he asked, smoothing his hands over their tops.
    “Not much,” she mumbled.
    “Wearing dress shoes every